My article about the Hungarian translation of V. Yerofeyev's poem
Moskow – Petushki deals with the fact that in Yerofeyev's writing not
only is the meaning of a word important, but also its position in the
sentence. To translate literature, one has to know not only the language,
but also the national customs and culture of the country in question. Just
to give an example, the words “vermouth” or “red wine” have different
meanings in both languages: the meaning of the word “red wine” in
Russian is “every drink containing alcohol besides beer and vodka”. As
in the German translation, there were also obvious mistakes, xepec –
vermouth or вымя (udder) – vese (kidney), which make the point
ambiguous. So in the end the translation might be understood as a
celebration of alcoholism, which totally contradicts the intentions of the
author.